Completely random post with a bunch of pictures of my week

The day after tomorrow we head out in the rv down to Texas.

This whole winter and our delayed and complicated exit is pretty weird. 

However my daughter is settled right now and has promised a thousand times to let me know if she needs me. The neighbours are watching the house, and my niece will be staying here sometimes too.

I have packed up everything I need including three sewing machines, some pre-cut projects, a case of vintage sewing samples for Tulsa, and some knitting I need to be sitting down long enough to finish.

What we can organize we have. 

However this afternoon my 87 year old mother-in-law broke a bone above her wrist, but that is now in a cast and appears to be a clean break. Not the best time to leave her but she will go stay with my sister-in-law, so hopefully she will be OK too.

You should see it around here,

Currently the rv is parked in the driveway snowed in and attached by ice to the driveway. We put on our boots and winter coats and dash out to pack things away in it in spurts.

It is of course a mini house so there is a lot of just transferring things out of the relevant rooms into their mini editions in the driveway. Out go the comfortable pillow and the contents of my makeup drawer. Out go too many pairs of my shoes and books to read. Out go the spices and the coffee maker. Out it goes and we try not to slip on the ice as we do it.

My husband is project manager of this stage of our year. 

He does itinerary and tire pressure and filling the fridge. 

I do working myself up to my annual performance as Nova Scotian's most delicate ageing princess.

You see until we hit Virginia at least we will be surrounded by cold outside the rv. 

All the rv places to park and stay are closed off season. So we have to stop at night in places that let you do that like overnight truck stops - my husband has philosophical issues with paying for motels and dining out when we are so fully equipped on our wheels. And we do have lots of good heat, water nearly all the time (got to watch those freezing pipes), an electric blanket, a stove, and a fridge. 

I get it.

But really there are only so many nights that this princess likes to go to sleep next to the sound of a row of semi trailers running all night.

So I am putting a lot of effort into setting myself up to be comfortable on the trip down - until we get to Texas where it should be warmer and until we can get to our first laundromat.

With appropriately low standards set for photography I am going to share some marvellous back of the bathroom door shots of what I have made this week, with comments. I stuck to a few of the same patterns for efficiency sake. I am sure once we are on the road I will be glad I pushed myself to get all this done.

Here we go:

I made a series of Patterns for Pirates Favourite Tee. The first few I made were as per pattern with what was a fairly wide neckband. I used a lot of cotton lycra for these tees and the wider band sticks out just a shade as you can see here in a blue version I made previously and a couple that I did this week:

Isn't this confetti cotton knit just terrific? I am so into confetti fabric right now and I don't know why. Reminds me of those confetti angel food cake mixes my mother used to make us when we were kids for special occasions.

Eventually I realized the thing to do was to just make the band narrower - I did this by just stitching a presser foot distance away from the edge of the band, cutting off the excess.

This narrower band lies much better so I made another series in this amazing luxe cotton lycra with a nice smooth hand from Fabric Snob. Love this fabric, very nice to work with for utility type tops suitable for traveling down the road with the dog on my lap:

In addition to the Favourite Tee I also made some Classic Tees from Lovenotions. The neckline here is more of a crew neck and the shape straighter, but I really like the reassuring way this covered up and comfortable tee shirt makes me feel:

A weird and fuzzy picture of a classic tee in double brushed poly. I usually never wear synthetics but this fabric is so cozy and soft. 

Since I was going all out on comfort clothes I also made a couple of pairs of sweat pants from the Jalie pattern. These have an elastic casing at the bottom in the pattern but I wasn't feeling that retro so I just made them straight.

I have to tell you they have a beautiful leg but of course you can't really tell that to see them hanging on the back of the bathroom door- where they look like something your dad would wear until your mother yelled at him to change into something nicer:

When I have more energy and am not cozy in here in the big chair with Daisy I will have to put them on and show them to you properly. A roadside rv shot in the slush would be nice.

Once thing I really like about these pants is the nifty way the pockets are done, entirely transferrable to other patterns.

These are so much nicer than those dreaded inseam pocket bags. You know the ones that never quite line up right and tend towards a lumpy bump twisting away over each hip.

Instead these pockets are made by turning under a bit and topstitching along a sort of curve on the front pant leg at the side.

After you have done this you just lay a pocket behind it and top stitch it down.

This leaves you with a completed front pant leg with a pocket now in it. You then forget about and continue sewing up the pants as you would be doing anyway. Slick.

Finally, because I was on a comfort clothes roll I made myself some little boy at Christmas pyjamas in knit - the top made out of the Lovenotions classic tee and the bottoms made out of the Jalie sweatpants pattern:

Just so you know, sometimes when you are doing rv travelling the driver is pretty intent in getting out of the Arctic Circle to some place where they have rodeos and BBQ cook offs. This means he might want to get on the road again pretty early. 

The beauty of rv travel, as opposed to airline travel where you have to take off your shoes and put your watch in a tray so you can cross through security just in time to see your flight get cancelled, is that a person in pyjamas like these can move in a short straight line out of her bed to the bathroom, to picking up a coffee, to strapping herself and the dog into the front seat, without even taking off her slippers.

And if you are not quite awake it is also even possible to drag your blanket along with you to that front seat.

So if you see anyone looking like, that next week or so, through the window of a 32' rv with Nova Scotia plates.

Wave.